Editorial: HSU’s Responsibilities beyond academic achievement

By on January 18, 2017

By: The Lumberjack Editorial Board

This spring 2017 semester, the Lumberjack staff requests that Humboldt State administration take more responsibility for student welfare, beyond just recruiting students to HSU. The Lumberjack asks that HSU not only consider a student’s academic education, but also a student’s basic living needs while attending HSU.

HSU entices students with its emphasis on environmental and social standards and opportunities for hands-on learning. Students are often charmed by the small town atmosphere and close-knit community. However, students find that finding a stable place to live and join the community for their stay at HSU to be a near impossible task.

Universities have more than a duty than to provide an academic education — it owes each and every student an opportunity to access a stable living situation.

Furthermore, leaving young students to the whim of Humboldt County’s housing market creates a potentially dangerous situation. Students may end up in living situations that present very real physical and health risks for fear of being homeless.

We need our administration to match enrollment with the size of the housing market. It is unethical to bring students to an area they’ve never been and expect them to pay for and maintain a full load of classes, while offering no help with housing outside of high priced campus housing.

HSU can and should do more to assuage the pressures of student life by doing more to prepare and warn students for the particular struggles in the HSU community. We ask HSU to look harder at buying more property in the area for student living.

This starts with administration simply being forthright and honest about Humboldt’s housing situation when recruiting students from across California and the United States.